For the first time in quite a long while, mid-September to be exact, I enjoyed an entire weekend in Lyon with no traveling, tourists or tour guides. Following our raucous Thanksgiving affair, and the beginning of serious end-of-semester work, a shock to all of us at this point, I was definitely looking forward to a quiet few days in Lyon. While it was definitely not strenuous, the weekend turned out to be an action-packed (host) family weekend. From the Friday arrival of a host son (and his wife) currently living in Switzerland through the final Sunday afternoon celebration featuring a dozen family members, I was once again completely immersed in French family life. What stood out for me this weekend were the children, not so much in how they were different than Americans, but how the ridiculousness resembled something I am familiar with back in the States.
In all, the weekend encompassed 4 huge meals (including 3 different pies), I think 9 bottles of wine (but who’s counting), and six different types of cheese. But, more importantly, we had family members ranging in age from 2 to 32, with many in between. The excuse for this celebration was the 6th birthday of my host mother’s grandson (my host nephew?), a ball of fun on the verge of losing his front teeth, and proud of it. This character is around the house at least two times a week, with his older sister keeping him in line, and it is through him that I realize how much progress I still have to make in French. Clearly, little kids are not big on the sugar coating, and if you try to tell them something that they just do not understand, they are not going to help you out by making an effort or anything. No, they make it painfully obvious that you cannot speak the language, and quickly become disinterested as you try to find the correct conjugation for a particular verb. Making it worse, their particular brand of mumbling is not exactly the French I was taught in the American education system, so the struggling goes both ways for me. Humiliated by six year olds; welcome to study abroad.
But I generally try to overcome the French barrier with him in using the universal language for any guy, that of sports. The only basketball I have played has been when I was dribbling around little Bicente in circles a couple months back (his defense needs some work), and obviously he is a huge fan of kicking a soccer ball and watching me try to do something resembling an athletic move with my feet. But again, this is all about cultural exchange, and naturally I tried this weekend to teach him the basics of baseball. His one confused look at my mitt revealed that we were going nowhere fast in that department, so I switched over to just the baseball, with little luck. Catching was a foreign concept for him, and so the first time I lightly tossed it in his direction, he just let it hit the floor and started to kick it around. After informing him that this was not an American version of a soccer ball, we attempted to work on the receiving end of the toss. Again, my French catching vocabulary could use some work, so it was more of a hand gesture activity than a conversation, but we went with it anyway. Finally, he caught on enough to make a two handed grab, reason enough for him to get back to kicking the baseball around in celebration. Maybe not a future shortstop.
The Sunday celebration brought even more grandkids over to the house, and thus more debauchery on a little kid scale. Only in France will you find the stark contrast between adults sipping on un apéritif while the children are racing through the conversation evading capture in a mean game of tag. While they may pass on the champagne, during the meal the kids do try to emulate the elder statesmen at the table by taking healthy helpings of both bread and fancy cheese. But after the last of the cake had been munched down, they go back to the frenzy, and two things struck me as undeniably universal in the small melee that erupted. First is that no matter their nationality, kids just love beating up on me, and this time around I don’t even know what to say to try to get them to stop hanging on my arm or demanding a piggy back ride. Definitely took a beating. But on a different level, everyone calmed down a little bit in astonishment when my host mother pulled out from a back closet a dusty yet impressive electric train set. All of a sudden, I looked around the table and saw my host father, two of the sons home for the weekend, myself, Henry, and the two grandkids all working together to make this electric train set work. To recap, that’s 3 different countries represented, with ages ranging from six to about sixty, all fascinated by the same toy. Talk about spanning cultures and generations.
In the end, Bicente’s haul of gifts turned out to include a paper airplane calendar, a Lego action figure, and a remote control car, three things that I have definitely received (or at least asked for) over the course of my 20 years. I guess that even if we cannot understand each other, and come from completely different backgrounds, we share more than one would think. Chalk it up to globalization.
After such a family weekend, today brought a touch of loss, as my roommate Henry headed back home to Miami. While I was definitely sad to see him go, his departure made mine seem that much closer, and now I am really having to face up to the fact that it is December. So much to do, so little time; there are worse problems to have.
